Caprica: Season 1.0

It’s been a while since a sci-fi series left me with as bad a taste in my mouth as Caprica has, so much so that I became pretty juvenile just a few episodes in and started referring to it as Crapica. This shockingly inept prequel to Battlestar Galactica is firing on so few cylinders it’s difficult to even know where to begin discussing it. Well, for starters, it’s worth mentioning that the 90-minute pilot, which is included here in both its rated and unrated forms, is a fairly competent and clever kick-start that promises greatness around the corner. Unfortunately, any sense the concept possessed is thrown out the window almost as soon as the series proper begins.

The place is, of course, the planet Caprica, 58 years before the events seen at the start of Galactica. Caprica is supposedly in a state of moral decay, akin to Rome before its fall. We know this because many of the adult characters smoke cigarettes(!) while the teenagers engage in sex-fueled and violence-driven virtual reality games. This is in and of itself problematic, because the world seen within the video games would be cause for alarm, but the outside real world of Caprica itself isn’t all that different from our world today, except everybody dresses like they’re from the 50s; everybody, that is, save for the Graystones, a rich family of scientists who seem to be a few steps ahead of the rest of the planet.

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Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is a real curiosity piece, as well as something of a minor holy grail for film buffs in the U.S. Probably the last time it was available here in the States was in the late 80s or early 90s on VHS. Thanks to the fine folks at Criterion, that’s no longer the case. Like many people, I became familiar with it due to its soundtrack, which wasn’t quite as difficult to find, at least if you knew where to look. That music was composed by one of the film’s stars, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the title track remains one of the greatest single pieces of music in film history. So transcendent is it that it’s managed to take on a life of its own, and has been remixed, rearranged and covered by at least a dozen artists, many in the past decade. Sakamoto admits that there was a lengthy period of time in which he learned to hate the tune, as it overshadowed nearly everything else he’d created in his long career. And it is probably a better piece of art than the film itself, but that’s really an apples and oranges kind of thing, so it’d be best to not go there.

The movie takes place in a Japanese POW camp during World War II and primarily concerns four very different men: two Japanese warders from the East and two British prisoners from the West. The first pair we meet are Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti) and Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), who have an unusual kinship. They frequently sit and engage in civilized discourse, while in other moments Hara seems to take great pleasure in beating the shit out of Lawrence for insubordination. It never fazes Lawrence, and he typically picks himself up after a beating and goes on about the business of trying to explain his perception of the differences between their two cultures to Hara.

The dramatic thrust of the film, however, exists somewhere in the lack of communication between Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie) and Captain Yonoi (Sakamoto), the camp commandant. From the first moment Yonoi lays eyes on Celliers, he is transfixed, and from that moment onward he makes Celliers his pet project, but to what end is unclear. Both men suffer from serious cases of regret, and yet they’re never able to explain to one another what they have in common. Celliers quickly becomes a disruptive force, while Yonoi tries to find new methods of keeping him down, while also building him up. It’s a movie relationship that practically defies a cogent description, because it’ll mean something different to each viewer.

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The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Third Season

It’s mildly irritating that The Big Bang Theory has become one of the biggest shows on network TV. This thing is a ratings behemoth at this point. It seemed so much cooler when not as many people were watching it (yet enough to keep it on the air). The misfit, socially outcast central characters made a kind of sense in that context. Now they’re seemingly as powerful as the superheroes they worship. Oh, it’s still a great show, or at least a very, very good one, but I think most people who’ve been there since the beginning will find a grain or two of truth in what I’m talking about. When the guys who hated you in high school are rooting for Sheldon Cooper (thanks for the info, Facebook), just a little something special has been inadvertently ripped out of the concept.

In writing up Season Two, on the subject of a possible relationship between Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Penny (Kaley Cuoco) I wrote that “the chase is half the fun, and to make Leonard and Penny a couple this early in the series would take away a lot of what makes it so special.” Clearly those words were spoken in misguided haste. Or perhaps not. Little did I guess that the very relationship I predicted would spoil the show would take off in the first episode of Season Three; it in no way spoils the show, but the writers don’t do a whole lot with the idea, either. (Some of the best stuff involves the couple standing in as surrogate parents of sorts for Sheldon.) It would seem, in fact, that this was one of those TV cases of “we’re bringing them together so that we can split them apart,” which is mercifully what happens before the season is over. Mercifully because it reopens that playing field for a new and different kind of Leonard and Penny game, which presumably we’ll be getting more of in Season Four. In the long run, this all may have been for the best.

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Being Human: Season Two

Now that’s more like it. I’m referring, of course, to the sophomore season of Being Human. Of its freshman season I wrote, “It doesn’t always reach as far it feels it potentially could” and “it’d probably be best to cut Being Human a little slack at this early stage of the game.” With its setup out of the way, the series is now taking long, deep breaths, and exhaling a fantastically entertaining combination of humor, horror and drama. This is where the series really begins.

With vampire leader Herrick dispatched (thank you, George), it has fallen on Mitchell (Aidan Turner) to begrudgingly lead the vampires, and so he chooses to do so with leading by example: No blood-sucking; he even manages to bring a sort of AA model to the group. He also finds himself smitten with a doctor from the hospital, Lucy (Lyndsey Marshall). George (Russell Tovey) has accidentally turned his girlfriend, Nina (Sinead Keenan), into a werewolf as well, which doesn’t exactly bode well for their blossoming relationship. And Annie (Lenora Crichlow) has found a way to go corporeal, and as a result takes a job at a pub and finds a romance (or two) that can’t possibly end well.

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Skins: Volume Three

Once upon a time (like two years ago) Skins generated a huge amount of controversy, and probably with good reason. Any show featuring oversexed, drugged-up teenage protagonists will tend to garner negative press. But Skins hung in there, and kept on doing what it does, and at the time of writing it’s got four seasons under its belt, and has been commissioned for another two. MTV is also getting in on the Skins action, and they’ll be unveiling their Americanized remake sometime in 2011.

Now, other than by reputation, I was mostly unfamiliar with the concept when it came time to watch this DVD release of its third season, but Will Harris did a fine job of covering Seasons One and Two (I’m still unsure about the decision to label these season sets as “Volumes”), so I was able to play a kind of catch up through his enthusiastic takes. Turns out, though, most of that was unnecessary, as in its third year, Skins has an almost entirely new cast of characters and a new set of stories to tell. For the time being, this is apparently the plan for the show – every two seasons the cast will rotate and change, introducing a new batch of kids in their final two years of the U.K. equivalent of high school. If you’ve never seen the show before, this is as good a place as any to begin an unhealthy education.

Skins is an ensemble series, although the season does shine the spotlight on each of the major characters for an episode apiece, all while continuing the ongoing story of the group. This season showcases a complex love triangle between bad boy Cook (Jack O’Connell), his lifelong skater friend Freddie (Luke Pasqualino), and the object of their attraction, Effy (Kaya Scodelario) – the primary crossover character from the previous seasons, as she was the younger sister of Tony (previously a major player, but now gone from the show). Effy is as fucked up a teen as any you’ve ever seen, and her parents are in the midst of splitting up, which doesn’t help matters. In the season opener, she catches the eyes of both Cook and Freddie, but Cook, being the more outgoing of the pair, manages to stake his claim first. What develops between Cook and Effy can only be described as toxic, and it’s borderline heartbreaking (or maybe just plain scary) to watch the deterioration of their dignity as the season moves forward. You want Effy to go for Freddie, but as is often the case in real life, the danger Cook offers is addictive for this self-destructive girl.

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Prime Suspect: The Complete Collection

Detective Jane Tennison is arguably Helen Mirren’s most famous role, and given the amount of time she invested in the part – roughly 25 hours over the course of 15 years – that shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Then again, what’s 25 hours in the grand scheme of TV? That’s only a few hours longer than one season of a typical American drama. Doesn’t sound like all that much, does it? Then it must be the quality of this dense work that makes it so worthy. In order to understand what makes Prime Suspect must-see TV on DVD, it helps to know the structure of the show.

In lieu of traditional episodic seasons, the show offers up a single storyline for each of its seven seasons, and each of those stories is comprised of two 100-minute blocks, so the stories are effectively comprised of two feature-length installments. (Only Prime Suspect 4 bucks the trend by offering three standalone 100-minute tales instead.) Through this structure, Prime Suspect is able to explore Tennison’s cases in an unusually thorough manner, and I dare suggest that this material will be best appreciated by the hardcore procedural enthusiast. If this is your kind of fare, then you owe it to yourself to see this set.

These stories twist and turn with all sorts of red herrings, roadblocks, and detours for Tennison and the various teams she works with over the course of her career. It’s easy when watching these stories to feel as if you’re caught up in an actual investigation, or perhaps it’s more like being a fly on the wall viewing the sordid proceedings.

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Doctor Who: The Creature from the Pit

There’s nothing wrong with “The Creature from the Pit” that a couple pints of ale (or whatever your choice of poison may be) can’t fix. Yet another entry from the Douglas Adams script-edited season of Doctor Who, whatever the story lacks in the plot mechanics department, it more than makes up for with its cracking wordplay. The jokes fly fast and furious in this one, which at one time was considered a negative, but I think we’ve all chilled out enough over the years to warrant giving this tale some serious (or not, as the case may be) reevaluation.

The Doctor (Tom Baker), Romana (Lalla Ward) and K-9 (David Brierly) are forced to materialize the TARDIS on the planet Chloris, a world which, as its name suggests, is ripe with vegetation. After discovering what the Doctor deduces is a gigantic eggshell, he’s taken prisoner by the planet’s ruler, Lady Adrasta (Myra Frances), whose duds are as close to dominatrix as anything this side of Emma Peel at the Hellfire Club. Adrasta is a temperamental bitch, and anytime one of her subjects does something she doesn’t like, they end up being thrown into the pit. And you know what’s waiting down at the bottom, don’t you? (If you guessed anything other than a creature, I’ve already lost you.) Chloris is also deficient in metal, so anything steely – including K-9 – becomes a coveted artifact. Sooner, rather than later, the Doctor ends up in the pit, and meets the behemoth, which is not quite what everyone thinks it is, and Adrasta certainly knows more than she’s letting on.

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Doctor Who: The King's Demons & Planet of Fire

Few long-running TV series manage to keep moving forward without the occasional bad idea – the kind where viewers collectively scratch their heads, and in unison sigh, “What were they thinking?” Given how long Doctor Who has been on the air in its various incarnations, it’s probably had more than its fair share of half-baked notions. If one were to make a list of such grievances, it seems likely that the Fifth Doctor’s robot companion Kamelion would land comfortably in the Top Five. Apparently, producer John Nathan-Turner wanted a new metallic emblem for the show, as K-9 had been gone for several years, and he’d recently gotten a glimpse of an actual working, moving robot, so naturally he wanted one for the series.

Since this was in 1983 – and here in 2010 robots are still fairly hard to come by – you can imagine that the results were somewhat less than spectacular. Not only did Kamelion look cheap, but the robot itself functioned so poorly that even though the character was a TARDIS crewmember for seven stories, we only ever saw him in two, “The King’s Demons” and “Planet of Fire.” Presumably, in the interim tales, he putters around the TARDIS, left to his own devices (curiously, nobody seemed worried about his fate in “Frontios,” the story in which the TARDIS was temporarily destroyed).

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Mona Lisa

Long before Irish director Neil Jordan made popular movies (Interview with the Vampire), or important movies (Michael Collins), or movies that were both (The Crying Game), he made some little movies that not many people saw. In recent years, he’s again returned to making little movies that not many people see, and yet there’s a difference between what he’s doing now, and what he was doing way back then; there often is with directors of his caliber. You can feel the hunger and the desire to impress or to say something worthwhile in the earlier works, and you don’t always get that vibe in the newer stuff. Mona Lisa is such a film.

It may not have the budget of In Dreams or the uniqueness of The Butcher Boy, and yet it’s got an immense amount of heart and a self-assuredness that makes it well worth carving out some time for. Apparently, someone in Hollywood felt much the same, as there’s a remake in the works, currently slated to star Mickey Rourke and Eva Greene, and it will be directed by Larry Clark (Kids, Another Day in Paradise).

It’d be all too easy to launch into a rant about how pointless it seems to remake this film, but I wouldn’t be saying anything that hasn’t been said a hundred times before about a hundred different remakes. Instead, I’d much rather write about Jordan’s film, which was something of a video staple for me back in the 90s, and yet it’s been over a decade since I last partook in its world. Viewing it again was a lot like spending time with an old, dear friend that you haven’t seen in ages.

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The Long Good Friday

HandMade Films is a production and distribution company that started out as a venture between George Harrison and his business partner Denis O’Brien. Initially it was put together simply to help Monty Python finance Life of Brian, but after the success of that film, HandMade kept going and going. The company has gone through numerous changes over the years, and these days their output isn’t nearly as revolutionary as it once was.

The last daring movie they were involved with was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, although even as recently as on Planet 51, HandMade is still something of a brand name. But back in the 80s, they were putting out all sorts of oddball, experimental films, and if you saw the label HandMade on a movie, it was worth checking out. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve reviewed three Blu-rays of HandMade pictures, courtesy of Image Entertainment: Withnail & I, Time Bandits and Mona Lisa.

The Long Good Friday is the fourth and final film (at least for the time being) in this series, and unlike the other three, I’d never seen it before its Blu-ray release. Unsurprisingly, it was also my least favorite of the bunch, which quite possibly wouldn’t have been the case had I seen it 15 or 20 years ago like the other three, as I was coming at it cold, with no sense of nostalgia. But this isn’t to say I didn’t care for The Long Good Friday, which is a fine film for what it is.

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Withnail & I

Probably the most profound line ever written in regard to Withnail & I describes it as being "as deep as you want it to be or as shallow as you need it to be.” I don’t know who wrote that, but I cannot discuss the film without mentioning it. Set in the final months of 1969, Withnail traces the antics of two out of work actors living in a filth-laden flat in Camden Town, London. To “escape all this hideousness,” they spend their time in booze and drug-addled hazes. With wits at an end, they head to the countryside to unwind for a weekend, never minding that they’re utterly ill equipped to deal with rural living. Along with the presence of Withnail’s Uncle Monty, and the possibility of a violent poacher, those are the film’s major plot points. In lieu of real plot, Withnail offers up two stellar leads in the forms of Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann, and the most infinitely quotable dialogue this side of The Big Lebowski And it’s got a following the size of the Dude’s to match – although most of them are British.

Marwood: “Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.”

I’ve been a fanatic for this movie for over 15 years now. It’s in my Top Five, and I consider it my civic filmic duty to turn as many people on to it as possible, especially since it’s just barely a cult item here in the States. I’ve been pretty successful in my endeavors over the years, although I can’t give you hard figures as to whom, when and where. Even if it was just one person in my life, I’d feel good about it, because this is a film meant to be shared with people who need to see it. I don’t know if you’re one of those people, but I’ll do my best to convince you that you are.

Withnail: “You can stuff it up your arse for nothing, and fuck off while you’re doing it!"

Withnail & I is a situation, and anyone who’s ever been in an insufferable friendship can relate to it...

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Time Bandits

If you were a certain kind of boy or young teenager in the 80s, then there’s a good chance Time Bandits was a very important film for you. Sure, you loved Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Goonies, but Time Bandits was special in a different way because not everyone else was in on it; it was seemingly dismissed even by most adults (well, the ones I grew up around anyway). For many young people, it was our first introduction to the whacked out joys of Monty Python, even if we didn’t realize it at the time, as Time Bandits is not a proper Python film. But half of the six-man comedy troupe is involved in the picture, and so when we finally got around to discovering Python, we recognized John Cleese and Michael Palin from this film. Little did we know, though, that all of Python’s strange animations were the handiwork of the guy that directed this piece. Wasn’t it refreshing to not have every fact and figure at your immediate disposal way back then? You picked up information over the years while actively seeking it out. Perhaps, as Time Bandits hints, computers really are the playthings of Evil.

However, it’s also possible you were not a certain kind of boy in the 80’s, or that you’ve never even seen Time Bandits. If so, let’s lay it out there. One night, 11-year old Kevin (Craig Warnock) lies in his bed. Out of his wardrobe tumble six dwarfs on the run from God (who here is referred to as the Supreme Being). He’s their employer and they build trees for him. But they’ve stolen a powerful map from God, and now travel around through history, attempting to loot the past for riches. Kevin follows, and finds himself in all manner of incredulous situations, such as meeting Robin Hood (John Cleese) and conning Napoleon (Ian Holm) out of his wealth. At the same time, Evil (David Warner, in one of his best roles ever) watches over, secretly plotting his takeover of the world via the map, and eventually, an understanding of computers. Exactly what is The Most Fabulous Object in the World, and can the inept group of thieves procure it?

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Friday Night Lights: The Fourth Season

It isn’t often that a series reinvents itself so successfully that you don’t find yourself longing for the seasons that came before, but that’s exactly what happens with Season Four of Friday Night Lights. At the close of Season Three, Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) had lost his job coaching for the Dillon Panthers, and a case of redistricting left him in charge of a non-existent East Dillon team. Further, most of the kids we’d grown to know and love over the previous three seasons were headed off to college. It could easily have been the end of the show, and it would have been a perfect series of notes to go out on, had DirecTV, which saved the show and helped to give us that third season, not stepped up to the plate and signed on to help NBC co-produce two more 13 episode seasons. Thank you DirecTV, because Season Four may actually be the series’ best since its first. Of course, where Season Four ranks in this fine show’s history is probably irrelevant – what matters is that it’s yet another great batch of chapters in the ongoing story of the fictitious town of Dillon, Texas.

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Crumb: The Criterion Collection

"Weird sex. Obsession. Comic books." That’s what the movie poster for Crumb said back when the movie came out in 1995. If you were trying to figure out a way to market this documentary at that time, those are as good of jumping off points as any, and yet there’s no question that Crumb is about so much more.

I don’t recall what exactly it was that drew me to Crumb 15 years ago, as I was only tangentially familiar with Robert Crumb’s art, having spent countless hours in various head shops – many of which still stock R. Crumb comics to this day. It may have been the “David Lynch presents” tag that is attached to the film. As director Terry Zwigoff explains, Lynch literally had almost nothing to do with the film; by the time he’d seen Crumb, it was practically finished, so there wasn’t much he could do for it – except add his name, which Zwigoff jumped at, simply because he knew that it would bring many more people out to see the picture. It’s entirely probable that I was one of those people. Of course, the reviews at the time could also have gotten me into the theatre, as the movie was being hailed all over the place, and with good reason: Crumb is, simply put, one of the great documentaries. There are far more important documentaries out there, sure, but few offer up the same amount of sheer entertainment value as Crumb. This is likely only true, however, if everything the man is about doesn’t offend your potentially delicate sensibilities.

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A chat with Lenora Crichlow of Being Human

The lovely Lenora Crichlow is mostly unknown to U.S. audiences, unless of course you’re a fan of the BBC America series Being Human (Saturdays at 9PM). Crichlow plays one third of a trio of roommates comprised of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. The striking actress [dis]embodies the latter - the spirit of Annie Sawyer, doomed to an afterlife of making tea and wearing the same eternal grey outfit. And yet in Crichlow’s performance there’s hope for something better, as Annie tries to make it in a world she shouldn’t even exist in, alongside her two best friends. Lenora took time out in between shooting Season Three and heading off to Comic-Con to talk to Bullz-Eye about what sets Being Human apart from other supernatural fare, the ongoing progression of the concept, and her phantasmagorical Uggs.

Lenora Crichlow: The thing is, Being Human does just what it says on the cover. In most of these vampire shows and werewolf shows – supernatural shows in general – there’s some kind of, at the essence of the show, a real celebration of their supernatural selves. The vampires and the werewolves are really glorified (although I haven’t seen Twilight) and I think Being Human’s stance is struck so differently because it actually comes from a place where the ultimate for these characters would be to be human again. Every single supernatural issue that comes up can quickly lead back to something within the human condition. Even though it is a supernatural show, it just gives the whole thing layers. The characters of Annie, George and Mitchell were originally written without being a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire, so the characters are very fully developed. It has a huge amount of comedy in it, it has amounts of angst, mystery and drama, but at the heart of the show I think you’ve got three very well-rounded human characters, which is something that whether you’re into sci-fi or not you can tap into and relate to. I love the show and I love being in the show and I think as an actress it certainly gives me a lot more to play with when I can bring everything I play with Annie right back home and right back down to earth, and you know, sort of grounded in some sense of reality. I don’t know how good I’d be at being too much out there. As fun as it is, it really does ground the show – the fact that they’re all trying to be human. That’s the show’s selling point and uniqueness.

The above is an excerpt from a much longer interview I did with Lenora. Read the entire piece by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Rhoda: Season Three

Rhoda was an incredibly successful series during its first two seasons. It was, in fact, a top ten show, going so far as to best its parent series, Mary Tyler Moore, in the ratings. And yet, as I understand it, the writers found it difficult to write for Rhoda (Valerie Harper) as a married woman. So at the start of Season Three they made an incredibly radical move for the time – they separated Rhoda from her husband, Joe (David Groh). Audiences were appalled, I guess because in 1976 those kinds of things just didn’t happen on TV. The ratings plummeted. Presumably, producers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns didn’t care, because the couple, despite some attempts to make it work, never got back together. And you really have to admire that kind of brashness on the part of Brooks and Burns, don’t you? It was probably a first that something of this ilk was explored on primetime American TV – and if it wasn’t, it had to have been the first time something like this happened to a beloved lead character whom the audience had, between the two series, known for six years.

I’d been somewhat led to understand that the material suffered as a result; surprisingly, that’s not even remotely the case. With Season Three, “Rhoda” remains at least as strong as in its previous seasons, if not a little bit a cut above. In my previous reviews of this series, I’ve made mention of how poorly written Joe Gerard’s character is, and it’s worth repeating. It’s a shame, too, because David Groh is a fine actor, who got saddled with lame material to play, and the events of this season certainly don’t do Joe any favors. The first episode of the season is called “The Separation,” and the show doesn’t waste any time getting down to business. It begins with Joe playing passive-aggressive games involving the couple buying a house which Rhoda desperately wants.

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Doctor Who: The Big Bang

And so we come to yet another season finale of the greatest science fiction series ever created. This is the recap I’ve been both anticipating and dreading writing in equal parts since first seeing “The Big Bang” some weeks ago; anticipating because of how much I adored this finale, and dreading because there’s no way I can do it justice in a mere recap. It’s not even an issue of space or time (or is it?), it’s a matter of the story, as well as the 12 episodes prior to it, being too dense to dissect thoroughly. You’ll have to forgive that this doesn’t resemble a recap proper, and I instead ramble on about other issues.

I didn’t go into “The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang” expecting a whole lot, conditioned as I am on Russell T Davies’s extravagant-yet-ultimately-lightweight season finales. Don’t get me wrong, they were most always a great deal of fun, but they most always left me somewhat wanting – excepting Season Three’s Master trilogy, although I’m not sure that’s in line with popular opinion. Oh, and “The Parting of the Ways.” Wait a minute…I loved most of his finales! But I often felt as if they didn’t go as far as they could. Part of the way through the current season the Pandoricrack, as I’ve come to call it, started to annoy me, and I began not so much resenting the thread, but rather simply dismissing it – assuming that whatever it was about wouldn’t be terribly thrilling. It turned out to be not only thrilling, but strange and deep and stimulating. This was Steven Moffat’s trademark “Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey” taken up to 11. (Maybe next year will go to 12?) This two-part finale forces viewers to go back and reexamine most of the season, and that isn’t something that can really be said for the Davies finales, which isn’t to imply they’re inferior. More on that later…

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Being Human: Season One

A TV series that in a one sentence pitch can be most easily described as “a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost all live together in the same house” must surely be a comedy, right? Well yes, and no. Being Human certainly has comedic elements, but they’re rarely of the “yuk-yuk” variety. It is in fact difficult to pigeonhole the series with a label. Is it horror? Comedy? Drama? It’s all those and probably more. And lest you think it’s schizophrenic in its presentation, that’s hardly the case. Being Human juggles all of these labels so efficiently that it probably deserves a new category all its own.

Now this isn’t to imply that Being Human is a work of pure genius, just that it’s adept in its mission. A massive stumbling block for me, that may afflict plenty a potential viewer, comes from the vampire and werewolf angles. Straight up – I am utterly sick to death of vampires and werewolves. Between True Blood and Twilight alone, you can’t turn on your TV, go to the multiplex, or even log onto Facebook without being inundated by both fang and full moon. Where were all these people when I stood proud and alone at the age of 10 in the school playground, boldly proclaiming my admiration for Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr., only to be heckled by my peers? Must these concepts be littered with ample doses of sex and romance in order to attract the masses? Apparently so. Being Human uses a bit of that as well, but not nearly as much as you’d expect from a series featuring vampires and werewolves, and its primary focus is instead on the building blocks of an unlikely kinship between its three protagonists.

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Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

From the very first scene, “The Pandorica Opens” is an ominous piece of work. France, 1890. Vincent van Gogh (Tony Curran) writhes in mental torment, presumably in the last days of his life. It appears that he actually did paint another piece, and it’s somehow tied to the Doctor. After the Doctor and Amy left Vincent at the close of “Vincent and the Doctor,” the Time Lord asserted that “we definitely added to his pile of good things.” Maybe they did, but it appears they added to his pile of bad things, as well. The implication even seems to be that by introducing Vincent to his universe, the Doctor may have played an inadvertent role in the artist’s suicide. Dark stuff indeed. But what is the painting? Bam! All of a sudden we jump to London in 1941 and we’re with Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) and Professor Bracewell (Bill Paterson), who now have the van Gogh painting. Bracewell insists that it’s Churchill’s job to deliver the art. Bam! A containment facility in 5145. River Song (Alex Kingston) is on the receiving end a phone call from Churchill meant for the Doctor. Swiftly she makes an escape thanks to the hallucinogenic lipstick. Bam! The Royal Collection, still in 5145. Presumably we’re back onboard the Starship U.K. and the van Gogh painting waits for River, having been added to the collection by Churchill 3200 years prior. Liz Ten (Sophie Okonedo) makes a reappearance. Bam! Still in 5145, River blackmails an alien dealer into giving her a vortex manipulator. Through this series of efficient sequences, it’s as if Steven Moffat is asking, “Have I got your attention now?” He most certainly does.

In the TARDIS, Amy (Karen Gillan) ponders the wedding ring, while the Doctor (Matt Smith) hatches a plan to take her to the oldest planet in the universe to see the oldest piece of writing, which is chiseled onto a cliff face. The TARDIS doors open and the translators show that the words as “Hello Sweetie.” Bam! Britain, 102 AD. The TARDIS arrives in front of a Roman army, and Amy mentions that Roman soldiers were her favorite topic in school. A soldier, whose face is smeared with lipstick, mistakes the Doctor for Caesar and takes the pair to see Cleopatra, whom River is impersonating. Finally we get to see the painting, which shares its name with this episode, and it’s a vision of the exploding TARDIS, painted exactly as we’d imagine van Gogh would paint such a vision. (Surely poster prints of this will be available for fans to hang on their walls any day now? I know I’d buy one.) Finally, seven minutes into the episode, we get the opening credits.

And thus begins what’s easily the most ambitious setup for a season finale the new series has yet done. “The Pandorica Opens” is positively cinematic in scope, direction, editing and, of course, writing. These setup installments were never this good in the Davies era, and it’s almost a shame it isn’t the season finale proper, as it would be an unbearable, months-long wait to see the resolution to everything this episode does. It would be the Doctor Who equivalent of Part One of “The Best of Both Worlds,” which ended the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact it’s somewhat strange that Doctor Who – a show infamous for its end of episode cliffhangers – has yet to end a season on any kind of serious hang (stuff like regenerations or Donna suddenly appearing in the TARDIS doesn’t really count). The feeling I got watching “The Pandorica Opens” is the exact same feeling I got while watching the last 20 minutes of “Utopia” from Season Three – only this thing kept up that level of intensity for nearly a whole hour.

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Doctor Who: The Lodger

Each season of the new Doctor Who has one or two “experimental” episodes – stories that just don’t feel like anything that’s come before. Thus far, most – if not all – of these stories have been successes. “Boom Town,” “Love & Monsters,” “Blink,” “Turn Left,” and “Midnight” have arguably been highlights in each of their seasons. It’s noteworthy that all but one of those was written by Russell T. Davies (and of course the one that wasn’t, “Blink,” was written by Steven Moffat). Davies seemed to be giving himself chances to think outside the [police?] box, and do something radical and different with the series on each occasion. I’m still not sure whether “Amy’s Choice” (which, like this one, was also directed by Catherine Moreshead) should be lumped into this group, but surely “The Lodger” is oddball enough to add to the list. So how does it stack up?


Well, it’s worth pondering why the story was made in the first place. For starters, it was very likely a chance to save some money. Aside from the episode’s climax, most of this tale is just people involved in seemingly everyday situations. But I think maybe there was more to it than just saving cash. Aside from “Boom Town,” the aforementioned stories were all designed to give the lead actors breaks. Given that this was the inaugural season of a new era for the show, it probably would have been a risky move to write the Doctor and Amy out for the bulk of a story, so instead what “The Lodger” does is remove Karen Gillan for most of the episode, while allowing Matt Smith the chance to chill out and just banter with James Corden (Gavin & Stacey) for an hour. Oh, and he also gets to play football, but since Smith has a history with the game, that probably wasn’t too taxing for him – the guy looks like he had a blast in that scene. Yes, for those of you who don’t know, Matt Smith once upon a time had dreams of being footballer, but a back injury led to him taking up acting instead.


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